"It looks the strangest red thing ever I saw on water.

I believed it moved but now, as if alive." Keeping my oar in motion, lest we should drift backward, I made shift to glance across my shoulder in the direction indicated.

The river had us completely in its grasp, tossing the light boat in a majestic flood of angry water, whitened by foam, and beaten into waves, where it rounded the rocky edge of the island.

Across this tumbling surge streamed the glorious sunlight, gilding each billow into beauty, while in the midst of it, bearing swiftly down toward us, came that strange thing that had so startled Madame.

What in the name of nature it might prove to be, I could not hazard--it had the appearance of some queer, shaggy animal, rolled tight into the form of a ball, having fur so radiantly red as to flash and burn in the sunshine.